(with-open-file (s "/path/to/your/output/file" :direction :output :if-exists
:supersede)
  (let ((*standard-output* s)) ;hope that's enough
    (tag-analysis:tag-file "copy.txt")))

Andras

(with-open-file (stream "your-file.txt" :direction :output)
  (let ((*standard-output* stream))
    (tag-analysis:tag-file "copy.txt")))

That pretty much is a big "red flag" to throw out in front of anyone
from the Middle East; Protestants have been working for _centuries_ to
try and get disassociated from the the gigantic "black mark" of The
Crusades.

If it's so, then it's liable also to raise the hackles of Jewish folk,
too, which arguably cuts out about the only "principled" ally (e.g. -
ally where the relationship is more than merely "convenient") that the
American administration has in the region...

It underlines the principle that Bush needs _desperately_ to learn to
_never_ open his mouth except when he's got a script to work with.

  Just as I find the turn towards fundamentalism in Islam very alarming (it
  started, I believe, with the religious fundamentalist overthrow of the
  Shah of Iran, as a very violent reaction to the "Western" influence, and
  which has been used by the morons who thought they could use religious
  fundamentalism for their own political ends, such as CIA's backing of
  Afghan nutcase groups which now become targets because they got out of
  control -- well, duh!), the turn towards more Christian fundamentalism in
  the political landscape of several European countries, including Norway,
  and the United States is not boding well for the future.  I believe that
  World War III will be a war between Islam and Christianity, motivated by
  simple turf wars over water and oil, but somebody as stupid and emotive
  as president George W. Bush may well lay a ground that will be very hard
  for more reasonable people to undo and reverse.  George W. Bush is using
  "God" in his speeches even more often than the Taliban are using "Allah",
  and this is neither patriotic nor inclusive -- it is parochial and _very_
  exclusive of those who are Americans and who do not share the president's
  _personal_ belief system and revengeful attitude.

  This _should_ have been a time for people everywhere to join the U.S.A's
  desperate need for international, panglobal support in fighting terrorism
  and ridding the world of the cultures that support such antisocial and
  anti-_human_ tactics to serve their sick, sick political agenda, but we
  are instead looking at a dangerously emotional and narrow-minded cowboy
  who fails to recognize that he would gain much more support from many
  more people if he could can his own religious zealotry (and unlike those
  who want adherence to the ANSI Common Lisp standard, this is what _real_
  religious zealotry looks like, to keep this sub-marginally on-topic :).

I'm surprised everyone has focused on the president's speech so much and has
not discussed the terrorists.  I for one am more interested in the
motivations for such a desperate and evil act them in the pious rhetoric of
some
marginally elected, C-average windbag who can't even seem to string together
three words before pausing to read his cue cards. (glad I got that off my
chest!)

I think I war in Afganistan is nothing more then an equally desperate act on
part of the president to make it seem as if he is actually doing something!
He knows why those terrorists did what they did and it wasn't for anything
as stupid as trying to sabotage freedom.  Who does he think he's kidding
here anyway!  The US was instrumental in the partition of Palestine (thus
founding Isreal) after WWII and did nothing to stop Isreal's unjustified war
with the Palestinians.  How would you feel towards a coutry that makes the
bullets and artillary that is hurled at you!

I am not saying that these people were justified but lets call a duck a duck
and not a "crusade" for freedom.  Isreal may have brought this situation to
a boil but it is our support of them that makes the US a target.

I would instead point to the use of the Middle East as a source of
_OIL_ as the more important cause for problems.

Anybody that behaves "stably" in the Middle East tends to be treated
as politically friendly irrespective of the form of government that
they have.

 - Israel at least has the merit of being a somewhat-functioning
   democracy; that would make it a _possible_ candidate for support
   on the grounds that America supports "freedom and democracy."

 - Saudi Arabia?  A kingdom where all important things are owned by
   the Saudi family.  _Definitely_ not a democracy.  Note that Bin
   Laden started becoming "criminal" when he decided to be critical of
   the Saudi government.

 - Kuwait?  Again, decidedly _not_ a democracy.

 - At assorted times, American administrations [note that this is
   distinct from "American people"] have supported governments in Iraq
   and Iran; in no case were these governments particularly "populist"
   let alone getting anywhere near being "freedom and democracy."

The common thread, throughout: "If you look like a stable source of
oil, you'll be our ``friend.''"  As soon as that stability is
threatened, the friendliness goes away.  If there was no oil in Saudi
Arabia, they wouldn't be a "good friend;" they'd most likely be
considered an irrelevant little tyranny, and the same is pretty much
true for all the other lands of "oil sheiks."

It seems to me that the recent events are to a significant extent the
consequence of fifty-odd years of these sorts of mercenary,
unprincipled dealings.  The US is pretty dependent on Middle Eastern
oil, so it's nearly impossible to get out of this cycle of
unprincipled dealings.  Walking away from it would be a daunting
challenge in all sorts of ways.  

To go further:

- at http://www.abc.net.au/pm/s371614.htm , an interview of Tamim Ansary about
his article.

- 2 petitions to Bush :

http://www.findefux.de/petition/Haupseite.php

http://www.thePetitionSite.com/takeaction/224622495

--
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean
killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity,
but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we
do?"  Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we have the
belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am
from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never
lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will
listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt
in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York.
I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan.  They're not even the
government of Afghanistan.  The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics
who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a
plan.  When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you
think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of
Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps."   It's not only
that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the
first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in
there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international
thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The
answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few
years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled
orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.
 There are millions of widows.  And the Taliban has been burying these
widows alive in mass graves.  The soil is littered with land mines, the
farms were all destroyed by the Soviets.  These are a few of the reasons why
the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already.
Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses?
Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done.  Eradicate their
hospitals? Done.  Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine
and health care?  Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs.  Would they at least
get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat,
only they have the means to move around.  They'd slip away and hide. Maybe
the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too
fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping
bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this
horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the
Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true
fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there
with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs
to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as
needed.  Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing
innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on
the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die
fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout.  It's much
bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have
to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of
Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by?
You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and
the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants.
That's why he did this.  Read his speeches and statements. It's all right
there.  He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem
ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the
West, he's got a billion soldiers.  If the west wreaks a holocaust in those
lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better
from Bin Laden's point of view.  He's probably
wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war
would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who
has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

Tamim Ansary

The US government is well aware that it must choose its moves very
carefully.  An all out air force strike would only make the US seem more
rash and irresponsible.  That is an image that the US cannot afford to
portray.  The US needs a world wide coalition to obtain its objectives.
Even mainstream governments would find it hard to side with a country that
makes a suffering people suffer even more.

I think the pundits are refering to being able to stomach American
causualties more so than Afgan causualties.  I don't think that the air
force will be utilized to anywhere near the extent that they were used
during the gulf war.  First of all it would be ineffectual and second it
would only tarnish the image of the US and thus make a world coalition more
difficult.  Ground troops will be the major American force and that means
Afgan civilian casualties should be kept to a minimum.  It would not only be
the most effective method but would also prove to be the most humane way for
the US to obtain Bin Laden and his network.

Because ground troops are really the only option, I think that any military
action against Afganistan would be short lived.  American ground troops are
woefully underprepared.  First of all they let anyone into the army and that
means you simply get people who are not qualified for any other line of
work.  Instead of a training ground for its best and finest, the US army has
been nothing more then a dumping ground for the unemployed for decades.
This means that the troops it has are undisiplined, lazy and generally
untrustable.  Is that the kind of people that they want to send to a war
zone?

The US does have a handful of highly qualified troops but not nearly enough
to obtain the US's objectives.  The US seems to only have been spending
money on increasing the technology in its military and as such only the air
force and marines can be classified as being a formidable force.  With its
two most powerful (an effective) divisions being redered useless, the US
will be hard pressed to put together a ground assault.

(with-open-file (stream "your-file.txt" :direction :output)